What is a page fault?
What is a page fault?
Page Fault:
It can be defined as a scenario in which takes a program while execution tries to access a memory block that is not stored in the physical memory device, or RAM. This results in notifying the operating system that it should locate the data in the virtual memory, then it is transferred from the secondary storage device, such as an HDD or SSD, to the system's primary storage device (memory) RAM.
The term "fault" may sound familiar like an error, but page faults are common and are a part of the way the normal computers handle virtual memory management. In programming or computing terms, a page fault usually results in generation of an exception, which then sends a notification or a signal to the operating system that it should retrieve the memory blocks or load the "pages" from virtual memory in order for the execution of a certain program to go uninterrupted. Once the memory block is transferred into physical memory, the program execution continues as normal. Thus, after that the process is executed in the background and always goes unnoticed by the user.
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